In 2023 alone, ransomware attacks hijacked more than 100 K-12 school organizations – more than double the 45 across 2022. Cybercriminals have honed their techniques, making it more important than ever to focus on your school’s security efforts to protect students’, families’, and your own staff’s financial information. 

In honor of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, we share three key areas where schools can focus their K-12 cybersecurity efforts: fundraising, transactions, online payments, and procurement. 

RELATED: Imagine a Cashless Future for your K-12 Private School 

Fundraising and Donations 

Parent and alumni fundraising is vital to budget and cash flow stability, so protect these donations from cyber criminals. More importantly, you have an ethical responsibility to safeguard donor financial information. 

Unsecure financial systems leave the door open to phishing attacks, fraud, and data breaches. While having a secure payment provider will always remain paramount, cybersecurity efforts must simultaneously prioritize employee training to minimize the number of serious threats in the first place. 

Here are additional ways you can best protect donor information. As we walk through additional areas of K-12 cybersecurity throughout this article, you may find overlaps in application. 

  • Be vigorous. Don’t wait to hear about fraudulent emails or phone calls from donors, proactively reach out to parents and alumni, informing them how official communications from the school will look and sound. 
  • Govern access. Only staff involved in processing donations should have admin-side access to donor and financial information. Those who do have access should receive periodic training to ensure their methods keep up with cybersecurity best practices. 
  • Implement secure gateways. Whichever payment processor you use must comply with a best-in-class methodology. For example, the PCI Security Standards dictate how to best protect payment data through specific encryption, hardware, and additional elements to prevent malicious cybercrime. 

Fees and Payments 

For the major expenses families need to pay, whether tuition before the school year begins or unscheduled fees throughout the academic year, modern K-12 cybersecurity threats call for the utmost protection. 

Use these strategies to ensure parent payment data remains secure. 

  • Make parents aware of official payment sites and communications. To prevent phishing attempts, train students and families to recognize fraudulent imitations of school payment sites, emails, and phone calls. Share up-to-date scam prevention tactics to make sure families don’t leak sensitive school data, such as a student’s SSN, through an unrelated cybercrime. 
  • Use a payments provider that offers secure payment options. For parents who prefer the ease of online transactions, ensure payment options are secure. High-security services like PayPal or e-checks offer a convenient, but highly encrypted, online experience. 
  • Prioritize mobile security. Younger parents especially prefer a mobile-first experience, so make sure to properly protect any integrated mobile payment provider. 
  • Properly encrypt payment data. As part of the PCI standard, proper protections for stored data include encrypting all transmissions of payment data across open, public networks. This point-to-point encryption makes payment data unreadable until it reaches a secure endpoint, where it is then decrypted for use. Until data reaches this environment, it is not valuable to hackers if stolen in a breach. 
  • Use multifactor authentication (MFA). Should cybercriminals take control of a person’s device, they can infiltrate your school’s system with a simple login. MFA requires the use of an additional device to complete a login, making it much more difficult for unauthorized access. MFA is especially useful for making mobile payments more secure, as access to any two of text, email, and/or a phone call creates a much more protected environment. 
  • Regularly monitor for suspicious transactions. Smart criminals may not make an obvious impact. Monitor and track all access to network resources and cardholder data to spot any suspicious activity, no matter how small. 

On a similar note, continually test security systems and processes to refine practices as needed. 

Student Transactions 

While parents and administrators remain common targets for cyberattacks, schools should also ensure children’s data security, as the sheer volume of day-to-day transactions across the student body creates ample risk. 

Lunch may be the most important social half-hour of a student’s social day, but from a K-12 cybersecurity standpoint, it’s also the most important financial half-hour. Every pizza, salad, and mystery meat passing through a physical point-of-sale (POS) system can cause a data breach. Use these tips to minimize the potential for an attack. 

  • Protect check-out registers. The rise of cashless cafeterias may add convenience to the lunch experience for students and parents, but the infrastructure involved creates opportunities for bad actors. Regularly maintain and check payment terminals for card skimmers or Bluetooth devices that steal payment information. 
  • Keep payment terminals off the public Wi-Fi. Separating payment terminals from the rest of your school’s devices makes it much harder to infiltrate these systems. Create a private, more secure network for the POS systems in cafeterias, on vending machines, and at school events. 
  • Regularly change login passwords. For cafeteria employees and cashiers who handle student payment cards and access the POS systems, create the need to periodically update passwords to prevent unauthorized access. 
  • Instill levels of access. A cashier does not need the same level of access as the kitchen manager. Manage each employee’s level of access to POS systems to ensure payment information is only available on a need-to-know basis. 

Staff Purchases 

K-12 cybersecurity doesn’t just concern students and parents. On the opposite side of the mirror, school administrators and staff play an important role in preventing unauthorized system access. 

One way is through school purchase cards, which give staff the flexibility to complete work-related procurement without the need for a cumbersome reimbursement process, but crucially also limit exposure to cybercrime. Here’s what to consider when choosing a purchase card provider. 

  • Control card usage. Purchase cards allow school executives to decide when and where staff are eligible to make purchases. Set spending limits through online controls to not only prevent risky purchases but protect school budgets and cash flow. 
  • Take advantage of a name brand payments network. Using a card backed by MasterCard, American Express, Visa, or Discover combines the convenience of universal acceptance with globally renowned payment security and fraud detection. 
  • Reduce the risk of fraud and embezzlement. Another benefit of working with a globally recognized payments network, outsourcing all relevant payment processes means your accounts payable team doesn’t have to manually track these payments with as much scrutiny.  

How to Bolster K-12 Cybersecurity at Your School 

Despite the growing sophistication of cybercriminal tactics, schools have proven options to protect student, family, and staff data. 

Diamond Mind, the trusted payments provider for thousands of private K-12 schools across the country, is PCI compliant, utilizes secure partners, and promotes responsible staff spending – ensuring secure transactions across all financial portals in your school. 

Strengthen your school’s financial cybersecurity with Diamond Mind’s simplified payment processing software.